edited by
J. Manfred Weichsel
(Independently published, July 2025, 202 pp., kindle, hc/pb)
“Ring of Atahualpa” by Ross Baxter
“Malaria is for Sinners” by Peter Edmundson
“Monkey See” by Lauren Taylor Bak
“The Best Thing To Do With A Big Stick” by Shane Porteous
“Jungle Juice” by Wyatt Roberts
“Invoking The Death God” by David Carter
“An Hour at the Knight’s Head” by Hagar Warren
“The Adventure of the Stolen Bridegroom and the Lust Goddess of Qoochie Qoochie Woo” by Rebecca Buchanan
“The Curious Confessional of a Perverted Herpetologist” by J. Manfred Weichsel and Alexander Joyner
“Prehistornication” by Pip Pinkerton
“Templo da Morte” by Ray Zacek
“Drenched” by Cardigan Broadmoor
Reviewed by Francine Taylor
Let me start with a general warning to readers; there are extremely explicit scenes in these stories. Not suitable for children. Or for most adults. Not just sex, but cannibalism, bestiality, mutilation…well, you get the picture. Read at your own risk.
I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the writing. Not up to professional standards, but far better than I expected from the subject matter—and better than at least 90% of the sexually explicit stories you’ll stumble across online. That said, all of them could have used a bit more editing. Typos, subtle word misuses, repetitious phrasing, POV slips, and spelling errors (“installments” has two l’s) cropped up often enough to be distracting.
In “Ring of Atahualpa” by Ross Baxter, we meet Peter Sinderby, an archaeologist who has come to Peru to study Incan ruins for his doctorate. He is certain he knows where to find the Ring of Atahualpa, a lost treasure. He is met by a dusky beauty who is also a professor on the Peruvian Board of Antiquaries. Together, they uncover the location of the ring and, to his surprise and pleasure, the nature and purpose of the ring is not what he had anticipated.
There was some really excellent scene setting at the beginning. The story has erotic moments and the writing isn’t bad, though the constant use of innuendo laden words when describing non-sexual actions gets a little tedious. Overall, it’s not a bad read for someone looking for a sexy romp.
In “Malaria is for Sinners” by Peter Edmundson, we meet Jorge, who is having sex with an “intellectually modified” nymphomaniac female sloth. In a post-coital haze, he staggers off into the jungle to hunt Nazis. On the way he runs into Dick Danger, a famous American spy, and his daughter Katja Danger, who, coincidentally, also happen to be hunting Nazis. Dick claims to know where Hitler is, and they all traipse off to a hut deep in the jungle, wherein they find Hitler, who has discovered his Jewish roots, turned over a new leaf and is now baking hamantaschen and writing his new memoir: Mein Kvetch.
The plot wanders drunkenly from a gratuitous sex scene between Jorge and his sloth sweetheart, to a heavy-handed anti-Nazi satire walkabout, to the arrival of a mosquito breeding neo-Nazi who is eventually vanquished by an unsurprisingly random attack from the narrator, and everyone goes on to suitably happy or unhappy endings.
The writing can be amusing and is sometimes clever, but the POV starts to wander toward the end, sometimes mid-paragraph, between the main narrator, “Jewish” Hitler’s vocally anti-Jewish companion, the uplifted sloth and back to the narrator. No effort is made to reconcile the obvious contradiction of the association of a now openly-Jewish Hitler being nursemaided by a Nazi pal who constantly spouts anti-Jewish sentiments.
If I had to guess where the story came from, I’d say the author pulled three cards from the “random concepts to write a story about” jar, and they were “Jewish Hitler,” “sex with a female sloth,” and “malaria.” But it isn’t terrible, and if you like a little tasteful bestiality and want to see Hitler roasted, this may be the story for you.
“Monkey See” by Lauren Taylor Bak has Diana Tinsley on her way to Madagascar to narrate a documentary on the aye-aye. The plane crashes and she and three survivors struggle to make their way back to civilization. She finds herself very attracted to two of the men, and very quickly that attraction is proved mutual.
The story has a good scene setting, an engaging conflict and interesting, well-constructed characters and dialog. If you’ve a yen for the tropes “two men with one woman” or “primal competition between men for a woman” you will probably enjoy this little tidbit. I must admit that I did.
In “The Best Thing To Do With A Big Stick” by Shane Porteous, Bash Kesadet, a gorgeous blonde with dark blue eyes, has been tied naked to a stake. She has heard there is going to be a feast so she’s waiting for the food to arrive. She hasn’t long to wait; monstrous lizard people come out of the jungle chanting “Eat!”
The narrator at first seems like the sort of suitably minimal character that one might expect from a porn based story; minimal in intellect, personality, and agency. However, once the lizards arrive it becomes clear that she isn’t the victim that they expected. She is not, in fact, human.
The story is straightforward and mostly lacking in either imagination or plot. Basically just one paragraph after another of a super-powerful bimbo-brained predator beating the crap out of a bunch of clueless, would-be, lesser predators and eating them. If this is your “thing,” then enjoy the feast!
“Jungle Juice” by Wyatt Roberts has all the elements of a classic horror movie. The Main Dude. His Girlfriend. His Best Jock Bud. Best Bud’s Girl. Teenagers Camping Alone in the Woods. Bad Decisions.
The story opens with a bunch of clueless, slightly horny teens in a jeep, heading for the wilderness. They camp and one of them pulls out shot glasses for the experimental drug her brother gave her. Cut to classic foreshadowing—her drug-lord brother in a bar, his first lieutenant yelling, “That shit is deadly!” Cut to…girl hears something outside the tent, sends her boyfriend to find out what it is.
And then the drugs kick in. The hallucinatory scenes hit me viscerally, flashing me back to a bad marijuana trip I once had. But it doesn’t stop there. This is the one story in the collection that fully delivers on the Jungle Scandals promise of “shocking.” If you love the classic combo of horror and horniness, this one’s for you, Bud! Just make sure you have a high pain tolerance.
“Invoking the Death God” by David Carter is framed as a transcription from an old medium. The rains have failed in Lu’umil, and the shaman tells the ajaw (chief) that a young woman must be sacrificed—chosen by lot and sexually sacrificed by his son—to restore balance. But the ajaw decides to ignore the shaman’s pleas not to anger the gods and rigs the choice to punish the woman who rejected his son’s marriage offer.
In the midst of a little tasteful girl-on-girl between the spoiled princess Ix Cheel Ek and her peasant lover Mukuy Keej, the sneering prince Aayin Baalam II appears to kidnap Ix Cheel Ek and give Mukuy Keej to his men to rape. Traumatized, Mukuy Keej is “rescued” by the shaman—who, in disguise as her lover, seduces Mukuy as part of his plot to summon the Death God and doom the city. I had hoped for a satisfying resolution, but after so much supernatural buildup and moral corruption the ending feels predictable and disappointingly anticlimactic.
“An Hour At the Knight’s Head” by Hagar Warren is narrated by an eighteenth-century physician, who warns that revealing it “would make me seem a madman in the eyes of my colleagues.” In a tavern filled with drink and bawdy song, Sir Wade shares a cup with him and recounts spying on a secret meeting of a lodge of women. Soon after, he was seized by a sudden illness and in his fevered wanderings he came upon the Grey City. Amidst its vine-covered ruins, he and his companions were attacked by white apes. On the verge of being killed, he was rescued by a female of the species. Before he can finish his tale, Sir Wade is distracted by a sound outside the tavern. He rushes off with the narrator in pursuit, to behold Sir Wade walking away with a mysterious cloaked and veiled female.
Readers who delight in the cadence of authentic eighteenth-century prose may find the tale richly rewarding, though others may be distanced by its retrospective nature.
“The Adventure of the Stolen Bridegroom and the Lust Goddess of Qoochie Qoochie Woo” by Rebecca Buchanan takes place in a world which is very different from our own. It has been many years since a comet swept past the moon and changed the world forever. Magic made the rains come, changed the animals and people. Women grew larger and stronger and men grew smaller and weaker. Wolves grew smarter. Horses developed a taste for human flesh.
The story begins with a stalled wedding ceremony in Reno. The bridegroom, Richard, is gone. Taken by “someone” at Virginia Lake, where he went for a stag party with the bride’s “idiot” brother and his friends. Growling in fury, the bride, Elizabeth Shagwell, grabs her axes and heads off to rescue her man from the sirens. Her mother decides to grab a mace and join the party.
Mounted on their faithful wolves, Elizabeth and her mother race to the lake. To get the sirens’ attention, Elizabeth pees in the lake. This produces the desired result. In a tense standoff between the Shagwell woman and the inhuman sirens, Elizabeth finds out that the sirens don’t have Richard, he was taken by mounted riders. She and the sirens strike a deal, and off our stalwart team heads, axes waving and lupine tongues lolling, to confront the horse cultists at the temple of the Lust Goddess of Qoochie Qoochie Woo.
It’s a fun romp. Lots of Amazonian energy, and regional details that felt very authentic to me (having lived in Reno for several years) and a thoroughly satisfying ending.
“Prehistornication” by Pip Pinkerton follows Viggo Athens, a former pugilist whose career was ended by an embolism, and who had drifted through odd jobs before finding work as an adventurer for Caiden Carpenter and Faith King. While searching for the technology of Zoanthrohago and the lost tribe of the Minuans, he stumbles upon an underground world which glows and is accosted by a muscular, primitive woman riding a dinosaur. She takes a liking to him and takes him home on her dinosaur. What follows is easily enough predicted, and the two of them settle down together in her hidden village.
The story is a fairly straightforward adventure about a modern man having vigorous sex with a horny and athletic primitive woman. If that’s to your liking, you may find this quite enjoyable.
“Templo da Morte” by Ray Zacek starts out in 1927 aboard a creaky sternwheeler. There are three archaeologists aboard: Professor William Bascomb, his lovely green-eyed assistant Gundrun, and a Harvard grad named Digby. Gundrun shows interest in Digby, and William is jealous. Digby flirts with Gundrun, who proves to be a very self-confident and dangerous woman. They are all traveling to Porto Progresso to investigate a previously unexplored pyramid, discovered during a push to expand a banana orchard in the Amazon. Walthrop, their host and the overseer of the plantation, is a typical Brit, bemoaning the “white man’s burden” and how difficult it is to civilize the native women, who are prone to stripping naked and running off into the jungle.
Gundrun, who proclaims herself to be a “free-speaking and free-thinking woman,” sighs enviously at the idea of rushing off into the jungle naked and is delighted by the artifact Walthrop shows them: an ugly little homunculus with a large and very erect phallus. That morning, they all head out for the pyramid, with the three archaeologists arguing over whose museum ought to receive the ugly little statue.
Before they can begin to explore the pyramid, a renegade tribe attacks, kills William, and takes Gundrun prisoner. Digby survives and heroically mounts an expedition to rescue Gundrun. It doesn’t go as planned.
The writing isn’t bad. There’s a strong sense of atmosphere and good period detail. The characters are well-formed and believable. Even though the plot is predictable, the ending leaves you with a feeling of completeness.
“Drenched” by Cardigan Broadmoor takes place in the jungles of Borneo, where Peter Dench has just arrived, hoping to discharge a debt to the porn mogul he despises. He’s looking for the journals of Baron Balthazar Lusterfield, who was run out of late-18th-century England for his scandalous and perverted behavior—taking his floating brothel with him.
Peter, a former porn star (yes, that will be important later), and a team of mercs stumble across a secret passage leading to a vast cavern. The cavern is populated by an assortment of oddly sexualized creatures: a beautiful woman with “hundreds of tiny blowholes puckered all over her body, grasping like the suckers on a squid’s tentacle”; an ejaculating sofa; and sexually aggressive, elephantine beings who employ the mercs as dildos (that will also be important later).
In the ensuing carnage, the blowhole woman grabs Peter’s hand and drags him toward a shack in the middle of a glade, with the surviving mercs hastily following in their wake. Inside, they locate the Baron’s journals and discover that the cavern contains a purple algae which causes Lamarckian evolution—children inherit the traits acquired by their parents’ habits. Which explains so much, really.
That night, the grotesque descendants of the Baron’s crew of “whores and perverts” dance and fornicate around the fire while Peter and the mercs huddle inside the hut, waiting for morning and intending to slip back to civilization with the Baron’s journals. Their plan is, of course, unexpectedly derailed.
The imagery is brilliant and, yes, quite shocking. My biggest literary complaint is that the main character suddenly has to become an idiot in order to force the narrative into a criminally predictable dramatic moment, eschewing craft for spectacle and excess.
I’m not sure I would call the climax satisfying, but it’s probably the best one could hope for, given the cirCUMstances.
Jungle Scandals claims to be shocking and rebellious. It will certainly be shocking to anyone unaccustomed to explicit fiction, but it’s no more graphic than the NSFW content you can find for free on AO3.
Of the twelve stories, I felt that only two were clearly aimed at satisfying female readers. Considering that women are by far the heavier consumers of written erotica (while men lean visual), the anthology would probably reach a larger audience by leaning into that demographic. Also missing: any m/m stories. That’s a big omission, the “slash” market has always been very popular with women looking for erotica, with an estimated 90% of it written and read by heterosexual women.
One last stat: nine out of the twelve stories take place in jungles. What is it about a jungle that makes everyone think of sex? Maybe it’s all the sweating…